Playing the Option
by dharmamonkey
Summary: An alternate vision of what might have happened after the fadeout at the end of "The Truth in the Lye" (2x5) had Booth come to his senses about the woman who really captured his heart. Told from Booth's POV.


**Playing the Option**

* * *

**By: **dharmamonkey  
**Rated: **M  
**Disclaimer:** Hart Hanson owns Bones. But people like me who play in his sandbox give you all those little moments that Hart and friends leave out. In this case, an AU do-over of the end of an ep that we've seen a dozen times.

* * *

**A/N: **_This piece is my take on what might have happened after the fade-to-black at the end of "Truth in the Lye" (episode 2x5) had Booth come to his senses a bit earlier. Some of you might start reading below and quickly decide this isn't your sort of thing. But like Booth told Brennan in "Woman in the Sand," I would ask you to "just try keep an open mind." Because if you know one thing about this monkey, it's that I always deliver a B&B ending (or at least one that points towards B&B inevitability). Trust me, huh? If you're game, I urge you to read on._

* * *

I shouldn't be feeling this way.

I shouldn't even be able to think. I just got my brains fucked out by a gorgeous woman who, as I'm laying here now, totally spent from the best sex I've had in years, is working her way back down to my dick with her mouth.

I can feel her hand lift up my half-hard dick and rub it across her lips. Her tongue flicks out and slides across the underside of my dick but my body's not responding. After a few more licks and a long, languid suck, she looks up at me with an expectant, almost sad little look in her eyes and pouts her lips.

"What is it?" she asks.

I swallow hard as I feel her roll my balls between her fingers, massaging them as she tries to rouse some kind of response from me—verbal or otherwise.

I lean my head back into my pillow and give a long sigh as I shift my hips against the sheet. Her touch is awkward, uncomfortable almost—ironic, I know, because just a couple of minutes ago I was inside of her and kept saying how she felt like heaven. But now that it's over, it just feels empty.

I feel empty.

And I know I shouldn't feel this way.

She doesn't know. She's laying there next to me, trying to suck me hard again so we can have another go, and it's clear as day that she doesn't fucking know. She doesn't know that just five minutes ago, as I was tucked there between her legs, pounding into her and filling the room with her sighs and peaking moans, leaning over and gazing into her pitch-dark eyes and watching the sweat glisten on her mocha skin, in my mind's eye, I wasn't seeing _her_. I was looking into a totally different pair of eyes—a set of pale blue-grey eyes that glimmered back like a melting icicle on the first warm, sunny day after a hard freeze—and the lips that formed the _oooh_'s and _aaah_'s that rose with each of my hard thrusts weren't full and bright with lipstick, but rather slender and glossed only with a very practical organic beeswax lip balm.

She deserves better. This woman, the woman who's with me now, deserves better than what I can give her.

I wish it hadn't been that way—the way it was when I was having sex with her but really making love to a totally different woman—but I can't help it. A part of me hates myself for doing what I did, and feeling the way I feel now, and that just makes me feel even worse. I've been here before, in this place, feeling like a royal prick and a raging idiot. This is the second goddamn time this week I've done this. Just a couple of days ago, I managed to find myself in bed—again—with my ex, Rebecca, fucking her senseless. I admit it. I was feeling like shit, lonely and exposed, and tried to make myself feel a little more whole and a bit less lonely by enjoying the warm affections of a beautiful woman. But in the end, just like tonight, it didn't change anything. I still felt like shit, just like I do now.

I still feel it, like there's a hole inside of me—the same hole I've been feeling gaping inside of me since the night I stood in the rain and watched the most amazing woman I'd ever met drive off into the night. That one night I didn't go home with the woman I wanted to go home with, and every night since then that I'd shared a woman's bed has been a bit of a disappointment, even if in the end, I got off, whether once or twice or three times.

Each time I wind up in bed with a woman, whether it's a one-night thing (I've only done that a few times, okay?) or with the woman I'm dating at the time or, hell, with a woman I used to be with (since _that _little scenario has happened twice this week), after the fucking's done, I find myself laying there next to her, listening to my lover breathe, and it's clear that she doesn't have what I'm after. Of course, it's not the fuck I'm after—it's not even a good time, or a laugh or a smile or a fun evening out. It's something else. Something deeper.

And every time I try to find it—that sense of fulfillment, for lack of a better word—in the arms of another woman and try to fill that empty space inside of me, I just feel all the more empty when I realize, yet again, that the gaping hole is still there.

The only time I don't feel it is when I'm with her.

_Her. _ My partner. _Bones._

I don't know why it's taken me so fucking long to figure it out. At some level, I knew it that very first night, when we kissed behind my old pool bar. No, that's not right. I knew it _before _that. I think I knew it—or at least had a good idea that she was light years different than any other woman I'd ever met—the morning I walked into her lecture hall at American University and damn near got knocked sideways by how beautiful and brilliant and confident and quirky she was.

There's only one thing that's gonna fill that hole inside of me.

_Bones._

Laying here, I know one thing. I have to tell her. I have to.

I draw a sharp breath as I feel my half-hard dick swallowed up by a warm, wet suction that at once sends a bolt of pleasure racing up my spine and yet makes my skin crawl. And it's then that I realize that I can't do this. I just can't.

"Wait, wait—Cam, stop," I say to her, threading my hands through her black, silky hair as I push her away. "Stop…"

She sits up suddenly and lets me go, letting me fall from her mouth as her beautiful features suddenly grow slack and the color seems to drain from her apple-shaped cheeks. "Why?" she asks me, her dark, nearly black eyes narrowing as her pretty pink lips pout and she gives her head a little shake. "What's wrong?"

"It's not right," I say vaguely. "We can't do this."

A crooked little smile hangs off her lips. "Nobody needs to know," she says in a husky voice. "This is just between us, you and me."

I swallow hard. "No," I tell her, sliding my hips back as I sit up in bed, propping my pillow behind the small of my back as I run my hand through my sweaty hair. "I…I just can't do this, Cam."

I look at her and press my lips together in a firm line. How do I tell her that I made a mistake, that I never should have let her think I fucking wanted her when what I wanted was to drown myself in the feeling of fucking her so I didn't have to think about the woman I really wanted?

I think back to what I said to Bones when we were sitting in her office after closing the case.

"_You know what, Bones?" _I told her. _"It might be all anthropology to you, but there are certain people that you just can't sleep with. I mean, you can pretend that it's just sex. You can lie to yourself, and you can say that it's all good. But, um, there's just…there's too many strings and…and too much at stake, you know? Too much to lose."_

At the time, I was trying to draw a line, I guess, but as I lay here in my bed watching Cam stand up and dress, the air between us heavy with an awkward tension, it's clear that the line itself was a lie.

"_There's too many strings and…and too much at stake, you know? Too much to lose."_

I've been lying to myself, every damn day, for months. The simple fact of the matter is, I've already lost damn near everything there is to lose—my chivalry and my self-respect—by lying to myself about what I want…who I want.

I know she wants me—there's no doubt in my mind after the way she looked at me when she said, _"I'm sure Rebecca's not your only option for satisfying your biological urges." _

Is there a risk if I take this step, if I make the move she was clearly giving me the go-ahead to make? Fuck yes. There are no guarantees. But if I don't give this thing a shot, I know one thing's for sure. That empty space I feel inside of me every night when I lay in bed, staring at my ceiling in the dark? It'll still be there, no matter what I do, or who I try to find comfort in.

She's it. The way she makes me feel, it's clear: Bones is the only one worth making the play for, and the only one worth risking it all for.

"I'm sorry," I sigh, pulling the sheet over my hips self-consciously as I feel Cam's pained eyes boring into me. "I have to…I just…I just can't..."

I know what I have to do. It's time to do what I should've done a long time ago.

I stand in the doorway of my bedroom in a pair of old sweats and watch Cam let herself out. Just before she shuts the door, she turns and looks over her shoulder as if she was going to say something, but merely shrugs and forces a smile, then sighs and closes the door behind her.

_Aw, Jesus, _I mutter to myself, letting my head fall to my chest as I marvel at what a magnificent fucking mess I've managed to make of my life. I rub my bare belly, which is still sticky with sweat from the couple of turns Cam and I had before I came to my senses, and I just stand there, staring at my bare feet for a few seconds, when my phone rings and vibrates in my pocket.

I reach into my sweats and pull it out. I glance at the screen for a second, then take a deep breath and flip the handset open to answer it.

"Hey, Bones," I greet her with a smile in my voice.

* * *

**A/N: **_So, it started off a little angsty (and you thought I might send you off in an icky direction), but I think we ended it on an up-note. Booth knows what he needs to do. And I think he's gonna do it._

_Before you ask, this is a oneshot. I do not intend a sequel. It's just a dose of Boothy brainspace offering a variation on how things could've gone differently. _

_Still, I hope you enjoyed it. Or found it interesting. Or at least Boothy._

_In any case, let me know what you think. Please consider leaving a review._

_Thanks for reading._


End file.
